


Knock, Knock, Knocking On Heaven's Door

by creatureofhobbit



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-22 06:59:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20870096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: For the prompt "inside" at 100fandoms. There were a few moments when Luke was tempted to join the tea party.





	Knock, Knock, Knocking On Heaven's Door

Luke had tried to brush off Olivia’s comments about how she knew he’d been knocking at the door trying to get in to the Red Room, to the tea party with Abigail and the young version of Nell. But maybe there was more truth to that than he’d been willing to admit.

Luke wondered whether a part of his previous drug taking had been a subconscious attempt to join his mother again, to see Abigail one last time. He’d never really allowed himself to become close friends with anyone else ever since her, just casual drug taking friends, and for a long time he hadn’t understood why. (Joey had been an attempt to change that, although he now realised the friendship wasn’t healthy for him). If he’d ever mentioned Abigail after they left the house, Shirley or Theo had usually shut him down by saying she was just an imaginary friend, to the point where Luke had even started to doubt himself. It was only now that he understood he’d distanced himself from potential friends because he felt guilt over having invited Abigail to stay over that night, thinking that if he’d never invited her, she’d still be alive.

Steve had kept trying to tell him that their mother was sick, that was all there was to it, and at first Luke hadn’t questioned it. At first, he hadn’t even understood fully what his mother had done; he had a few blurry memories of the tea party, of his father knocking his drink out of his hands, but at the time he’d had no idea why. Steve had ended up being the one to tell Luke what had really happened, but because at the time he didn’t believe in the ghosts of Hill House, his explanation didn’t exactly explain so many other things he thought he remembered from the time. So there had always been that part of Luke that wanted to go back there, to speak to his mother and ask her, to her face, why she did what she did, so he could try and make sense of it. Every time he’d taken drugs, he’d always hoped that part of him would get to speak to his mother or Abigail; sometimes he'd even believe that he really was with them, until he’d come crashing down, realising that the whole thing hadn’t been real.

In that moment where his mother was trying to tell him that he’d been knocking on that door for a while and now he could finally join them, and he saw Abigail for the first time in years, the real her as opposed to the Abigail who haunted his nightmares every night after his drug binges, Luke was tempted for just one moment to walk in there, to turn his back on the rest of his family and what they had become. Here was somewhere he could be happy; he understood now that this reunion was what he had been seeking out for years; a chance to see his mother again, to understand why she did what she did, and a chance to tell Abigail he was sorry, to have a proper friend again after so many years. And it was a chance to be with Nell again, the other half of him, to fill that hole left in his life.

But he realises now, as he celebrates his two years of sobriety, Theo, Steve and Shirley and their respective partners by his side, that to have stayed there with his mother and Abigail, trapped in that house for all eternity would have been the wrong decision, that this is where he really wants to be. This is where he can rebuild relationships with those of his family who got out; this is where he has a future; this is where he can build a home.


End file.
